PETROMANIA

The discovery that ancient people had
employed natural sun and shadow displays to note seasonal events
at Inyo posed a serious question. How were these discovered? To
note the display employed as the equinox animation, someone had
to be on the site, know the exact day of the equinox event, and
have a need to make such a notation in the first place.
Additionally, a knowledge of Celtic lore, the ogam writing system
and Gadelic language was part of the knowledge base. Besides all
this, the maker would have had to notice the very subtle display
in action. The odds of this being accidental are far too great to
assume the chance discovery. Some other factor was at work. That
factor may very well be a petromantic message that would draw a
knowledgable, albite probably quite curious shaman (or
Druid) to investigate the area. Once the unique shadows
had been discovered, the place would have been considered a gift
from the gods, in this case, the god was Lugh. Dr. Barry Fell
introduced me to this insight. He had addressed petromantic
messages some time earlier. This is a quote from the Epigraphic
Society Occasional Papers, Volume 10, Part 1, 1982, page
96.

"Such natural 'pseudo-ogam' greatly
interested our Ancestors, who mistook it for mysterious messages
from the gods. A pseudo-science that the Greeks called petromania
was developed, purporting to give interpretations of these
supposed divine messages... Occasionally an actual bit of
readable text can be produced by these natural
processes..."

The Greek pseudo-science Dr. Fell refers to
evolved from the practices of the Earth Mother Cult. This is the
generic name given to the practicing Edenites who called
themselves the People. By the time of Greek civilization, the
controlled populace was no longer informed of the monotheistic
belief that God had created the world and that we are all
"children of God." In the oldest philosophy, the work of God was
the public explanation for what we now call nature. Science has
replaced the mysteries once explained with religion.

Once I understood that this philosophy was
known to literate priests, shamen and druids, the reading of
oracle stones, burnt bones, and entrails suddenly became a
literal term. Recall that nothing was arbitrary or incidental,
everything, including the patterns made by random veins and
vessels in entrails or the arbitrary sedimentation later to form
rocks broken to wave tossed pebbles or strata in mountains. If it
formed a readable message, or a readable message could be
conjured and agreed upon, it would be and was considered a
message directly from God and acted upon accordingly. The
earliest writing systems are either consonantal syllabic or
consonantal vowel-less. Either case gives a lot of latitude in
making determinations from oracle readings. The trait is known to
many older cultures, Native Americans, Celts and Phonecians
included.

It should not be surprising that in
Amerindian culture the trait is demonstrably present. In many
places, sculpted rocks or formations were considered special
because an image or representation could be recognized. The
legends and inferred representations vary from place to place but
the petromantic concepts remain a constant.

If the Celtic Ogam and image of Lugh have
been properly analyzed, then the presence of someone who knew how
to do these things is proven. How you would spell Lugh in Ogam,
without a stem line is demonstrated several times at Inyo.
Pictured below is the hillside location of the natural temple.
The blasting destroyed one of the letter staves, but examination
has led to the conclusion that the intrusive volcanic material
that made up the letter staff did penetrate to the surface and
the reconstructed image is reasonably accurate. It is easily
readable as the letters either G-L or L-G. L-G can be read as
Lugh. G-L can be read as an abbreviated form of "Lugh of the
west." Either reading is perfectly acceptable, such is the nature
of petromantic messages. Whoever could read this, read it to be
an important message, written by the hand of God. This was cause
enough to consider the area sacred ground and investigate it's
properties.

The views are from approximately where the
ancient trail must have been. The size of the nearby lake varied
quite a bit, but there were periods of time when the marshy
shoreline would extend to the base of the petroglyph site. One
could not pass by the location, heading south, without seeing
this.

The importance of Inyo was known into historic
times. When the first American settlers came into the area, they set
up camp about 15 miles from the Inyo site, near the Owens River.
History records that they were approached by Native inhabitants.
It is not likely that any of the Americans could speak the Panamint
dialect of Shoshone or that any of the Natives could speak English.
The one item that came out of the "discussion" was the name "Inyo"
and the idea that Inyo was the dwelling place of a great spirt. I
suspect that the gestures toward the petroglyph site was cause
for the mountain range to bear this name.

There was physical evidence that notes the presence of Shoshone venerators
some thousands of years after the sites creation, pot sherd offerings. The site
creators did not use pottery, the Shoshone did and in an identifiable style.
Clifford Baldwin, in his 1931 survey, noted the tithed offerings in his records (
Baldwin) and they now reside at the Eastern California
Museum, Independence, California. The pottery style is labeled "Owens Valley
Brownware."

It was mis-communication that kept the knowledge of the secrets of
the Inyo location known to "Chief George," the leader of the Native inhabitants
that first approached the Americans. Eventually, the Amercan habit of killing
the Native at will and without consequence brought the two groups
into severe conflict that ended with the incarceration of the areas Shoshone
population for three generations of "pacification." The concept of "Dwelling
place of a Great Spirit" is now understood somewhat more properly.

Notes about this discovery:

While searching for related habitation sites west of the Inyo
petroglyph site, I chanced to look back on the hillside to the
north of the site. I saw two huge black lines quite clearly
against the beige dolomite. Without much hesitation, I considered
that the two lines looked like a natural ogam letter, a "G" to be
exact. Then I noticed another line, equally dark, but about half
the width and length of the first two. A huge blasting scar was
adjacent to the third line, but a vein through the scar was
visible. Abandoning the evidence search, I walked the quarter mile back to
the base of the hillside and scrambled up the blasting scar to
investigate. At the very top of the damaged area, a small patch
of undisturbed hillside proved the black material had penetrated
to the surface and it was logical to conclude that the fourth
line was similar to the third. This was a second potential ogam
letter, an "L." The identification of this petromantic message
now exposed, explained why an image and prayer to Lugh was
present at Inyo.